Tag Archives: Frank Portone

Review: Scheherazade

By Perry Tannenbaum

Among over 100 versions of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade that you can find on Spotify, the name of the violinist who plays the title role, in rare instances, will appear on the album cover. Given the enduring popularity of this Arabian Nights suite and the challenges it presents for our narrator, you can probably assume that the part of Scheherazade would be a prime arrow for an aspiring concertmaster to have in his or her quiver. Charlotte Symphony’s ace violinist, Calin Ovidiu Lupanu, proved once again that he had it. Unlike his previous triumph at Belk Theater as the spellbinding Arabian in 2009, Lupanu didn’t upstage conductor Christopher Warren-Green, who was then auditioning for the music directorship he now holds. No, this triumph could be credited to the entire orchestra, a redemption that was lifted even higher with a sense of renewal as Symphony’s new principal clarinetist Taylor Marino and their new principal bassoonist Olivia Oh made auspicious Belk Theater debuts. The program was also more propitiously supplemented, with the prelude to Englebert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel launching the evening and Richard Strauss’s youthful Don Juan bringing us to intermission.

If you were expecting that lineup to be altogether spirited, lyrical, and upbeat, Humperdinck’s “Prelude” would have been a surprise. After Warren-Green dedicated the evening to the late Wolfgang Roth, Symphony’s former principal second violin, the soft and soothing choir of French horns set an appropriate tone and the sheen of the violins added soulfulness to the dedication. In the uptempo section that followed, Warren-Green banished all Wagnerian influences, so the piece became summery and bucolic. When the music crested and became rather grand for a children’s fairytale, the mood we arrived at was jubilation rather than conquest.

Maybe the Warren-Green dedication, assuring us that Herr Roth was listening, was the reason that everybody in the orchestra brought their A-game. Not only did Symphony eclipse their previous Scheherazade of 2009, they bettered their Don Juan performance of 2005 under the able baton Christof Perick. Lupanu gave us foretastes of things to come, sparkling in his early exchange with the glockenspiel and getting in on more of the storytelling late in Strauss’s tone poem with principal harpist Andrea Mumm Trammell, another harbinger of sweets to come. But it was the horn section and principal Frank Portone who atoned most mightily for the blemishes of yesteryear, announcing the Don’s heroic theme and keying a thrilling climax before the timpani and brass piled on. Warren-Green not only measured up to Perick’s Strauss expertise, he provided a useful explication, in his introductory remarks, of the full stop at the climax of the piece and drew our attention to the beautiful love song that principal oboist Hollis Ulaky would play. She did not disappoint.

All across Scheherazade, Lupanu and Trammell renewed their gorgeous partnership, stitching the narrative together, but it was Lupanu who reveled in the most virtuosic opportunities. In the opening “Sea and Sinbad” movement, Lupanu played so softly that Trammell’s harp actually sounded louder at times. He was commanding in one of the passages I most look forward to, the speed-up that cues the full orchestra’s build to the full epic, oceanic majesty of Rimsky’s symphony. Oh emerged impressively at the forefront for the bassoon’s graceful statement of the “Kalendar Prince” theme, and Marino was scintillating in the lyrical “Young Prince and the Young Prince” movement, first in the magical run after the gorgeous theme and later in the accelerated waltz section, dancing with the two flutes. Yet Lupanu reasserted his dominion with a narration that included some ricochet bowing before the orchestral repeat of the waltz and a delicate fadeout.

Lupanu’s double-bowed intro to the eventful finale – “Carnival,” “Sea,” shipwreck, “Bronze Warrior” – moodily contrasted with the busy tumult to come, beautifully dispelled by flutists Amy Orsinger Whitehead and principal Victor Wang as we arrived at the boisterousness of Baghdad. It had seemed that Warren-Green and Symphony couldn’t surpass the power and majesty of the opening movement, but they had not peaked too soon. There was a phantasmagorical speed and madness to the festival that broke dramatically into the “Sea” section with muscular brass and towering grandeur. Not an easy episode to follow, but Lupanu saved his most devastating eloquence for his final cadenza, sustaining a cluster of long high harmonics over the harp.

Review: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto

By Perry Tannenbaum

Beginning in September with two of the pinnacles of Western music, the Emperor Concerto #5 and the Choral Symphony #9, the Charlotte Symphony has been presenting an autumn of Beethoven. They rewound Ludwig to Symphony #1 in October and checked in with two more symphonic works earlier this month, the Violin Concerto and the rarely performed “Overture to The Consecration of the House.” So it figures. They’re getting good at it.

Unlike the masses, I look forward to live performances of the Beethoven’s Violin Concerto far more eagerly than yet another iteration of the mighty Symphony #9. In fact, I played hooky from the earlier concert where the great Chorale kicked off the 2017-18 Classics Series. If Leo Direhuys, Peter McCoppin, and Christof Perick could triumph with the Symphony and their chorus (formerly known as the Oratorio Singers of Charlotte), so could their current maestro, Christopher Warren-Green.

Brassy, stately, contrapuntal, and grand, the Consecration overture convinces you that Beethoven had an English period like Haydn and Handel. Ludwig was likely studying Handel, along with Bach, when he received this commission in 1822 – or harvesting the fruits of recently studying those giants. It is music that Warren-Green, hailing from the UK, showed a natural affinity for. The maestro certainly sparked a fleet, zesty performance from the orchestra, especially the trumpets and the trombones, who brought gilded fire to the heraldic episodes.

Earmarks of the second movement of Choral Symphony showed up in the bustling section of this delightfully chameleonic work, and the ending took a similar path in amping up its intensity. I wasn’t at all surprised to discover that the composer was putting the finishing touches on both works at about the same time.

Beethoven had already completed his Symphony #5 when he wrote his lone Violin Concerto in 1805, so we can count it as one more glory of his wondrous Middle Period. After triumphing with the overture, Warren-Green wasn’t letting up on the orchestral power. The violins, sweet in their opening passages, became sharp and lively with the onset of the timpani.

You could say, then, that after 13+ minutes of prime orchestral Beethoven, guest soloist Benjamin Beilman had a tough act to follow in his Charlotte debut. But this wasn’t his Carolinas debut, for the violinist has been one of the featured artists in the Bank of America chamber music series at Spoleto Festival USA for the past three years. He makes a suave impression, and I’ve heard him excel down in Charleston in a Beethoven string trio, a Ravel duo, and piano quartets by Dvorak and Fauré. But I was interested to see what would happen when he collided with this concerto colossus.

When the collision occurs, the music should win, carrying the soloist with it. You can hear that happening on the very best recordings, such as Itzhak Perlman’s with the Philharmonia Orchestra or Isabelle Faust’s with the Orchestra Mozart. Nothing quite that magical happened as Beilman took on the epic Allegro ma non troppo opening movement. But if Beilman didn’t sweep us up to the skies, he certainly treated us to some of the most muscular high notes I’ve heard at Belk Theater and – within his first solo spot – some stunning pianissimos.

While the ideal flow of the labyrinthine lines eluded him in the early part of the movement, the virtuosity demanded by the climatic cadenza did not. In the Larghetto middle movement, the woodwinds supplied cathedral-like sounds for Beilman’s rapturous entrance, a perfect showcase for his burnished midrange.

Flaunting tradition, he actually paused before the captivating Rondo-Allegro finale. After the dilatory opening notes, however, Beilman pounced on the familiar theme like a panther and infused the pizzicato passages afterwards with eager delight. The majestic cadenza was like a mini-concerto of its own, sweet and wistful at its center with fire and intensity on both ends.

After intermission, Warren-Green needed to grab a microphone and tell us about the novelty he had embedded in Symphony’s rendition of Johannes Brahms’s Symphony #4. Apparently, the composer had attended a performance where the conductor had reduced the violas to a mere two players when their section was to be most prominent. Brahms heartily approved, so Warren-Green decided to revive the practice.

When that hushed moment came in the Andante moderato second movement, and principal violist Benjamin Geller and Ning Zhao brought brief attention to their oft-overlooked section of the orchestra, it was a curiously effective way to evoke the living presence of the composer – 132 years after his death. Warren-Green’s anecdote also subtly pointed up the meticulous preparation of the entire performance.

You could hear the scrupulous attention to detail in the sweep of the violins in the opening Allegro. Aside from the violas, principal clarinetist Eugene Kavadlo and principal oboist Hollis Ulaky distinguished themselves in the newly emphasized second movement. The ensuing Allegro giocoso had a frolicsome feel as timpanist Leonardo Soto pleasantly traded licks with a triangle. After a long respite from Beethovenian fire, the flame was relit in the Allegro energico finale.

Battles between the violins and the trumpets were deliciously intense. These were counterbalanced with solo dialogues between principal French hornist Frank Portone and principal flautist Victor Wang – and a second helping with Portone and Kavadlo. Heading out of that quiet section into the rousing finish, the whole French horn section had their best showing of the night.

March 17, 2016, Charlotte, NC – For the first time in nearly two years, the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra presented an all-Russian concert. These two programs were elegantly linked by the appearance of CSO concertmaster Calin Lupanu playing one of Sergei Prokofiev’s two violin concertos on each occasion. Or that was the intent, because after conducting Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3, music director Christopher Warren-Green was obliged to pay off a wager he had made in early February, prior to his previous appearance in the orchestra’s classics series. That was the weekend of the Super Bowl, when the Carolina Panthers squared off against the Denver Broncos. Well, since both orchestras are led by Christophers and abbreviate themselves as the CSO, it was natural that the friendly municipal pre-game wagering would not be limited to our mayors. Amid an online exchange of jovial slurs and vaunts, Warren-Green declared that, if the Panthers lost, he would conduct the Broncos’ theme song, Copland’s “Rodeo,” wearing Bronco quarterback Peyton Manning’s iconic No. 18 jersey. Keeping his word, Warren-Green capped an evening that began by intoning the Satanic revels of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” with the sunshine and mirth of the quintessential American composer’s ballet music.

Warren-Green’s prime objective with Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s macabre classic was very much like it was in 2009, when he conducted the piece as part of his audition for the music directorship. Then and now it was quite obvious that Warren-Green felt that the concluding calm of the piece, beginning with the churchly tolling of the tubular bells, was normally undervalued. Fortunately, the orchestra took a more dynamic path this time around than they did seven years ago, when they drained the tone poem’s familiar opening of all its wonder and terror. Now instead of smoothing it over, Warren-Green was exaggerating the contrast, speeding up the tempo of the rampaging strings and calling forth more volume and sforzando snap from the brass and percussion. The effect veered way too far from Bela Lugosi toward video game, but the onset of the bells was far more miraculous this time around. Accompanied by Andrea Mumm’s harp, the violins suddenly sounded mournful and exhausted after the wild Witches’ Sabbath, eventually modulating toward calm and restoration after poignant solos by clarinetist Drucilla DeVan and principal flutist Amy Orsinger.

You could hardly ask for a sweeter opening than Lupanu’s for the Prokofiev Violin Concert No. 2 – even from the justly lauded Maxim Vengerov recording with Rostropovich and the London Symphony. But I wanted more muscle as the tempo speeded up. We occasionally lost the soloist’s line behind the French horns, but the sinew of Lupanu’s playing emerged in the Allegro moderato when the lower string sections moved into the background, very persuasive in the higher passages. Although it couldn’t be confused with Philip Glass’s work, there is intensive repetitiveness at various points of the soloist’s part in Prokofiev’s outer movements, which may explain why Lupanu felt compelled to bring the score with him onto the Belk Theater stage.

Subscribers who are persnickety about such things, expecting their guest artists to memorize their pieces, were probably more pacified by Lupanu’s soulful performance of the Andante assai inner movement. After the stealthy intro from the woodwinds, gently weighted toward the clarinets, Lupanu’s lyricism excelled again in the upper regions. Over a leisurely 3/4 accompaniment, the music swelled to anthemic strength with Lupanu gliding and somersaulting above. Muted trumpets then pulsated, quickening the pace as the soloist broke into a gallop. When the accompaniment resumed its previous repose, Lupanu wove some high filigree and pizzicato work into the fadeout. The jauntiness of the 3/4 tempo was most pronounced in the closing Allegro ben marcato, punctuated by a snare drum, a set of maracas, and the brass pumping a merry oompah behind Lupanu’s lusty fiddling. There was a final burst of intensive churning where Lupanu snuck a glance or two at the score, but he ended admirably with a virtuosic flourish at a blistering tempo.

The CSO program booklet is utterly confused about the orchestra’s only previous performance of the Rachmaninoff A-minor symphony, for the 2009 date ascribed to guest conductor Leslie Dunner was actually the date of Warren-Green’s aforementioned audition with its woeful “Bald Mountain.” No, it was during the twilight of the Clinton Administration, January 1999, when I greeted the only previous performance of Rachmaninoff No. 3 as “turgid, clichéd movie music, grandly entertaining and flamboyantly superficial.” But the allusion to Warren-Green’s is curiously apt because once again, the CSO maestro has improved upon a previous CSO flop.

Where Dunner stumbled in his attempts to “civilize and homogenize” Rachmaninoff’s abrupt shifts of mood and tempo, Warren-Green succeeded brilliantly, rehabbing the music as effectively as my Mariss Jansons recording with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. Again the middle Adagio-Allegro movement stood out as when Dunner performed it, with principal French hornist Frank Portone ably caressing the forlorn intro once more. This time, with Lupanu sitting out the second half of the concert, it was Joseph Meyer in the concertmaster’s chair following up so beautifully on the violin. Not only did Warren-Green navigate the rollercoaster shifts of the outer movements more convincingly, he also held the inner logic of the middle movement together more securely. When we circled back to the solos by Portone and Meyer, there was a satisfying sense of an epic circle being completed, crowned by more tasty solo work by Terry Maskin on the English horn and Eugene Kavadlo on the clarinet.